Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "The Devil's Advocate" (1997). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

 

A Chiasmus cult cinema personal favourite, the 1997 movie "The Devil's Advocate", starting Al Pacino, who plays "John Milton", aka Satan, and Keanu Reeves, as "Kevin Lomax", the Florida lawyer who has never lost a case, who has been enticed to come to New York, with his wife, "Mary Ann Lomax" (Charlize Theron) to work for Milton's law firm based in Manhattan.  Adapted from the novel of the same name, and written by Andrew Neiderman in 1990, with American director Taylor Hackford, renown for his 1980s stylized adult dramas "The Office and Gentleman" (1982), and "Against all Odds" (1984), owning the rights to the screenplay in the early 1990s, after it was unsuccessful pitched throughout the late 80s and early 1990s.

And what better antihero, than the mythical reworking of the biblical Luciferian or Satan character by hundreds of years of Romantic writers, as the misunderstand antagonist, who were all heavily influenced by the 16th Century epic poem "Paradise Lost" written by a blind John Milton, as a way of understanding that Satan is basically the antithesis of God, and hell, is heaven's inversion, and at the end of the day, it is us, human beings, who are easily swayed and corruptible.  The devil is just doing what it does best.  And without simplifying the good versus evil premises, it is the stellar performances of Al Pacino, and Keanu Reeves, as, Pacino's character, obviously based, in name only, of the Milton of past, mentors "Kevin Lomax" with stop-and-go offerings throughout the movie with everything he could possibly want, and the retracting whilst decreeing to the ambitious young lawyer, that maybe it is too much, and it may well be, "your time to lose".  As Lomax and whis wife settle into their Carnegie Hill, Manhattan apartment, with its massive interior, issued to them by Milton as a sweetener, who happens to also reside in the same building, as a massive single room penthouse. 

There is no doubting the "Rosemary Baby" (1967) similarities to The Devil's Advocate, of the enticement, manipulation and exploitation human desires, as a way of conjuring for something more sinister.  In this case, for Keanu Reeves character ("Kevin Lomax) to have sex with Connie Nielsen character "Christabella Andreoli", who is actually his half-sister to born the antichrist.   Whilst Milton continues to throw everything at Lomax to sway him (very Faustism) from his greed soaked path which Milton has set for him, under the auspiciousness of freewill, and yet, as Milton says towards the end of the film, "Vanity, is definitely my favorite sin".  Lomax holds the line, despite his wife (also note Charlize Theron's incredible performance) being admitted to a psychiatric ward, after seeing visions, and hearing voices, while hallucinatorily believing that she was raped by Milton, and then attempting to kill herself.  To which Lomax's mother, played by Judith Ivey, admits that John Milton is actually Kevin Lomax's father.  And the climax of the movie, is Lomax confronting Milton, at his single room penthouse, in one of Al Pacino's most iconic monologues, defending his, being Lucifer, position against a tyrannical, sadistic god who has left man to his own devices.  

In a worthy Pachino stage performance, he yells this line at Lomax, "I've nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have! I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him, in spite of all his imperfections! I'm a fan of man! I'm a humanist. Maybe the last humanist. Who, in their right mind, Kevin, could possibly deny the 20th century was entirely mine? All of it, Kevin! All of it! Mine! I'm peaking, Kevin. It's my time now. It's our time."

Sympathy for the Devil?   "The Devil's Advocate" doesn't quite offer that, rather it is a love story, and one of redemption. That if you are indeed seduced by greed and that vain expectation of fame and future, as Pachino's "Lucifer" explains once again: 

"These people, it's no mystery where they come from. You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire, you build egos the size of cathedrals, fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse, grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god, and where can you go from there? And as we're scrambling from one deal to the next, who's got his eye on the planet?"

Then, we've only got ourselves to blame.  Not the devil.

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(A.Glass 2025)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema